Teacher Education for Transformation: The Case of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa (CIE, 2002, 73 p.)

Chapter 2: The Institutional location of the HDE Programme

(introduction...)

2.1 The University of the Western Cape

2.2 The Faculty of Education

2.2 The Faculty of Education

The recent history of the Faculty of Education is intimately
tied up with the anti-apartheid and social reconstructionist history of UWC. In
the 1970s the dominant orientation in the Faculty was that of Fundamental
Pedagogics, while in the 1980s the Faculty began increasingly to identify with
the People's Education for People's Power movement, a national resistance
movement seeking to establish a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic political
and educational system in the country.

The dominant approach to teacher education in some universities
and in the majority of colleges, even in the early 1990s, was Fundamental
Pedagogics (Sieborger and Kenyon, 1992; Hofmeyr and Hall, 1995), described as
follows:

Fundamental Pedagogics is the dominant theoretical
discourse in South African teacher education. It provides little illumination of
the present social and educational order, of possible alternatives to that order
or how teachers might contribute to transformation. By excluding the political
as a legitimate dimension of theoretical discourse, Fundamental Pedagogics
offers neither a language of critique nor a language of possibility (Enslin,
1990: 78).

Enslin explains how, through an elaborate logic, Fundamental
Pedagogics identified itself as a neutral science, cordoned off from questions
around ideology or politics. By separating pedagogy from any discussion of power
and privilege, Fundamental Pedagogics managed to create a discourse of silence
and acceptance about the role of education in society. An astounding picture
presents itself, of generations of young people who were living under a system
of racism and domination, learning not to ask questions about the link between
educational policies and practices and the oppressive policies ruling their
lives. (That this was not entirely successful is, of course, illustrated by the
crucial role played by educational institutions in the history of resistance in
the country).

Enslin herself notes the different discourse at UWC:

There the theoretical discourse could be described
as eclectic, offering critical perspectives on education through liberal and
Marxist perspectives. It is significant that both these perspectives treat the
political as central to a critical understanding of schooling in South Africa
and to future possibilities for South African education (1990: 88).

An extract from the Faculty mission statement of 1992 gives some
illustration of the spirit of the Faculty at the time:

As the Faculty of Education at UWC we
aim:

- to contribute to the development of
educational theory and practice in a rigorous academic and professional way

- to participate, in a spirit of challenge, in the
reconstruction and development of education in South Africa to redress
historical inequities ...

We locate our work in the social, cultural,
political, economic and ecological development of the region, the country and
the continent (Mission statement, 1992).

Expanding student numbers in the Faculty in the late 1980s meant
that many new staff were appointed in the early 1990s, so that by the mid-1990s
there were forty members on the academic staff. Many of these people had been
involved in the People's Education movement, and they provided the catalyst for
much of the new thinking in the Faculty.

At the time of writing (2000), the Faculty of Education was
facing a new set of historical circumstances. Many staff had moved into other
institutions or into government or parastatal structures and, due to fiscal
restraints and dropping enrolments at the university, these staff were not
always replaced. Increased competitiveness for a dwindling market of Education
students placed UWC at a disadvantage to its neighbouring universities, where
better facilities attracted the more academically-able students. The student
body increasingly was drawn from the poorer sections of society, in particular
from rural African backgrounds, where inadequate schooling meant that students
were often academically weak. Nevertheless, the spirit of UWC was still very
much alive, as was evidenced by the comment at a Faculty review of the HDE
programme, where lecturers remarked that one of the strengths of the Faculty
was: Our strength lies mainly in our commitment and in our critical
edge, and the fact that we have our heads in the clouds but our feet on the
ground! (Final Year Teacher Education programme review, 2000,
p.3).